A Stormy Spanish Summer

by Penny Jordan

  Fliss could hear the sadness and the regret in Vidal’s voice and recognised that he had cared a great deal about her father.

  ‘I have never ceased to feel guilty that it was my thoughtless comment that provoked my grandmother into questioning Felipe and your mother about their relationship. And I never will.’

  That Vidal should make such an admission caused Fliss’s heart to ache for the pain she could tell he felt.

  ‘You were a child,’ she reminded him. ‘My mother told me that she felt your grandmother had her own suspicions about her and my father anyway.’

  ‘Yes, she told me the same thing when I first visited her—after my grandmother’s death. Her kindness was balm to my guilt.’

  ‘When you first visited her?’ Fliss questioned. ‘When was that?’

  She could see from Vidal’s frown that he had said more than he’d intended. His voice was clipped, his words sparing, as though he was being forced to say more than he wished to say, when he told her, almost reluctantly, ‘After my grandmother’s death I visited your mother. As head of the family it was my duty to … to do so—to ensure that both you and she—’

  ‘You came to England to see my mother?’ Fliss interrupted him.

  ‘Yes. I thought she might want to have news of your father. The manner in which they had been parted had not been … kind, and there was you to consider—their child. I wanted your mother to know that you and she would be made very welcome if she were to choose to bring you to Spain. I thought she might want your father to see you, and you to meet him.’

  Vidal was trying to choose his words very carefully. Felicity had suffered so much pain already. He didn’t want to inflict still more on her.

  Fliss, though, had guessed what Vidal was trying to shield her from.

  ‘My mother didn’t want to go back to Spain? She didn’t want me to meet my father?’ she guessed.

  Vidal immediately defended Fliss’s mother. ‘‘She was thinking of you. I’d had to tell her about Felipe’s breakdown, and she was concerned about the effect that might have on you.’

  ‘There’s more, isn’t there? I want to know it all,’ Fliss insisted.

  For a minute she thought that Vidal would refuse. He turned away from her to look towards the window.

  ‘I have a right to know.’ Fliss persisted.

  She heard Vidal sigh.

  ‘Very well, then. But remember, Felicity, all your mother wanted to do was protect you.’

  ‘Nothing you can tell me will change how I feel about my mother,’ Fliss assured him truthfully. And nothing could change how she felt about Vidal either, she knew. He had misjudged her, and it seemed she had misjudged him, but her love for him remained as true now as it had been all those years ago.

  Vidal turned back to look at her. Fliss held her breath. Could he somehow read in her eyes her love for him? Quickly she dropped her lashes to conceal her expression.

  ‘Your mother told me that she did not want there to be any contact between you and the Spanish side of your family,’ Vidal began. ‘She asked me to give her my promise that there would not be. Initially she was afraid that it might lead to you being hurt. You were a young girl, with perhaps an idealised vision of your father that she recognised he could not match, and then later she was equally afraid that you might—out of daughterly love—sacrifice your own freedom to be with your father. I gave her the promise she asked for, so when your letter to your father arrived—’

  ‘You kept it from my father. Yes, I can understand that now, Vidal. But why didn’t you simply destroy it? Why did you bring it to England and … and taunt me with it?’

  The pain in her voice cut into Vidal’s heart.

  ‘I thought it best to discuss the situation with your mother in person. I didn’t intend to taunt you, as you put it, I merely wanted to ensure that you did not write to your father again.’

  ‘You came all the way to England just to discuss that?’

  Vidal made a small dismissive gesture with one hand, as though to sweep her question away, and immediately Fliss knew.

  ‘You didn’t just come for that, did you? There was something else.’

  There was another pause whilst Vidal once again looked towards the window before turning back to tell her, ‘As I said earlier, as head of the family I felt it my duty. Your mother had had a very difficult time, enduring the loss of the man she loved, and the totally unacceptable financial hardship she had to suffer before.’

  ‘Before she inherited all that money,’ Fliss said slowly. ‘Money from an aunt who Mum had never once mentioned to me and who I never met. Money that Mum often said she was grateful to have because of all that it would do for me. Money to buy us a lovely house in the country that she said was especially for me. Money that meant Mum didn’t have to work so that she could be there for me. Money to send me to a good school and then university.’

  Her mind was frantically scrambling over small facts and clues that suddenly, when put together, created a potential truth that shocked her to the core.

  ‘There was no wealthy aunt, was there?’ she challenged Vidal in a small bleak voice. ‘There was no aunt, no will, no inheritance. It was you. You paid for everything.’

  ‘Felicity—’

  ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ Fliss demanded. The blood had drained from her face, leaving shadows beneath the curve of her cheekbones. ‘It’s true,’ she repeated insistently. ‘You were the one who bought the house, who gave Mum an allowance, who paid for my education.’

  ‘You and your mother had every right to what I provided for you. I was only redressing the wrong done to you by my grandmother. Your mother was reluctant to accept anything from me at first, but I told her then as I tell you now that it would only have added to the guilt the family was already carrying if you were not given something of what should have been yours.’

  ‘I’ve been so wrong about you.’ Fliss’s throat was so raw with emotion she could hardly speak. ‘I’ve misjudged you so badly.’

  She was so agitated that she stood up to pace the small area in front of the chair, almost wringing her hands in her despair.

  ‘No, Fliss. You simply misinterpreted the facts as you saw them. That is all. I am the one who has been guilty of misjudgement—and a far greater misjudgement than yours.’

  ‘Please don’t be kind to me,’ Fliss begged. ‘It just makes things worse.’

  How much worse only she could be allowed to know. Now she could see Vidal as he really was, instead of coloured by her own erroneous beliefs. Now she could see how tall he stood, how honourable he was, and how truly empty her life would be without him in it.

  ‘I want you to have my father’s house,’ she told Vidal. ‘I don’t want any money for it. It’s right that it should return to being part of the estate. I’m going home, Vidal.’ she added. ‘As soon as it can be arranged.’

  ‘Felicity—’

  Vidal took a step towards her, causing Fliss to step back. If he touched her now she would fall apart. She just knew it.

  ‘I can’t stay here now.’

  ‘You’ve had a shock. It isn’t wise to make decisions in the heat of the moment.’

  As he spoke Vidal was reaching out to her. Another second and he would be touching her. She couldn’t let that happen. She didn’t dare.

  Fliss stepped back, forgetting that the chair was there, and would have fallen over it if Vidal hadn’t grabbed hold of her.

  She could hear the heavy thud of his heartbeat, smell the warm scent of his skin. He was only holding her arms, but the whole of her body was responding to being so close to him, yearning and aching for him.

  Fliss moved to pull back from him, and then gasped when instead of releasing her Vidal’s hold on her tightened. She looked up at him, her eyes widening as he lowered his head towards her. His breath seared her lips. Sensual heat flooded her body.

  ‘No,’ Fliss protested, but her protest was lost beneath the passion of his kiss.

  She wan
ted Vidal so much. She loved him so much. But Vidal did not love her.

  ‘No!’ Fliss cried out, pushing him away. ‘Don’t touch me. I can’t bear it. I’ve got to leave, Vidal, I love you too much to stay—’

  Horrified by what she had revealed, Fliss could only stare up at Vidal, who was standing as still as a statue, looking back at her.

  ‘What did you say?’ Vidal’s voice was harsh.

  He was angry with her, and no wonder, Fliss thought. She had embarrassed him and made a fool of herself.

  ‘What did you say?’ Vidal repeated.

  In a panic, Fliss stepped back from him, shaking her head as she fibbed, ‘I didn’t say anything.’

  Vidal had stepped back from her, but now he was closing the distance between them.

  ‘Yes, you did.’ His topaz gaze held hers. ‘You said you loved me.’

  Fliss had had enough. Her self-control was at breaking point and her heart felt as though it was already broken. What did her pride matter now, when she had already lost so much?

  Lifting her head, she told Vidal, ‘All right, yes, I do love you. The children I want to have—the children I want to know their Spanish heritage—are your children, Vidal. Don’t blame me if you don’t want to know any of this, if you don’t want to hear. You made me tell you.’

  ‘Not want to know? Not want to hear the words I’ve been aching to hear since you were sixteen years old?’

  ‘What?’ Now it was Fliss’s turn to question him. ‘You don’t mean that,’ she protested.

  ‘I mean it more than I’ve ever meant anything in my life.’ Vidal assured her. ‘The truth is that I fell in love with you when you were sixteen, but of course you were too young for a man’s love, and it would have been dishonourable and very wrong of me to have spoken to you of my feelings then. I told myself that I’d wait until you were older, until you were mature enough for me to court you properly as a woman.’

  ‘Oh, Vidal,’ Fliss breathed.

  ‘It’s true,’ he assured her. ‘That was why I misjudged you. Because I was jealous. Jealous that someone else had taken you from me. I did you a terrible wrong, Fliss. I don’t deserve your love.’

  Fliss could see that he meant what he was saying, and her heart ached for him.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ she insisted. ‘And if I’d known then how you really felt about me, I suspect I’d have done everything I could to persuade you to change your mind.’

  ‘That is what I was afraid of,’ Vidal admitted tenderly. ‘It would have been the wrong thing to do for both of us but especially for you.’

  When Fliss started to protest, Vidal stopped her.

  ‘You were too young. It would have been wrong. But hearing that boy boasting in the way that he did sent me a little mad, I think. I told myself afterwards that the girl I loved didn’t exist, that I’d created her inside my own imagination. I told myself I should be glad that you were not the innocent I had thought, because had you been my self-control might have betrayed me and I might, out of my love for you, have broken the trust your mother had in me.’

  ‘So you stopped loving me?’

  ‘I tried to tell myself I had, but the reality is that I ached and longed for you. Only my pride kept me away from you—especially when your mother died. You haunted my dreams and made it impossible for me to put any other woman in your place. I resigned myself to living without love, and then you walked back into my life. I knew that everything my pride had told me about the impossibility of loving you was a lie. I loved you no matter what. I realised that that first time we were in bed together—before I realised that I had misjudged you. I wanted to tell you how much I loved you, but I felt it would be wrong to burden you with my love. I wanted you to have the freedom to make your own choices, free of any burdens from the past.’

  ‘You are my choice, Vidal. You are my love, and you always will be.’

  ‘Are you really sure that I am what you want?’ Vidal asked her with unfamiliar humility.

  ‘Yes,’ Fliss told him emotionally.

  ‘I am your first lover.’

  ‘The only lover I want,’ she said fiercely. ‘The only lover I have ever wanted or will ever want.’ Fliss knew as she spoke that it was true.

  ‘I hope you mean that,’ Vidal told her thickly, ‘because I am not generous enough to give you a second opportunity to walk away from me.’ When he saw the way Fliss was looking at him Vidal warned her in a voice rough with passion, ‘Don’t look at me like that.’

  ‘Why not?’ Fliss asked him mock innocently.

  ‘Because if you do then I shall have to do this,’ Vidal told her, kissing her so passionately that Fliss felt as though the desire he was arousing within her was melting her body right down to her bones.

  ‘We’ve both fought so hard not to love one another, but it was obviously a fight we were destined to lose,’ she told him breathlessly, once he had stopped kissing her.

  ‘And one in which losing I know I have won something far more precious—you, my darling,’ Vidal responded, before kissing her again.

  What a joy it was to know that she could respond to him with all her heart and all her love, knowing that he had given her his, Fliss thought as he kept on kissing her while he carried her over to the bed.

  ‘I love you,’ Vidal told her as he placed her on it. ‘I love you and I will always love you. This is where our love begins, Felicity. Our love and our future together—if that is what you want?’

  Wrapping her arms around him, Fliss whispered against his lips, ‘You are what I want, Vidal, and you always will be.’

  ‘I want you to marry me,’ Vidal told her. ‘Soon—as soon as it can be arranged.’

  ‘Yes,’ Fliss agreed. ‘As soon as it can be arranged. But right now I want you to make love to me, Vidal.’

  ‘Like this, do you mean?’ he asked softly, as he started to undress her.

  ‘Yes,’ Fliss sighed happily. ‘Exactly like that ‘

  EPILOGUE

  ‘HAPPY?’

  Fliss raised her hand to touch Vidal’s face, the wedding ring he had placed on her finger less than twenty-four hours earlier gleaming in the sunlight. Her sparkling eyes and the emotion that lit up her face gave Vidal his answer without the need for any words, but she still spoke, telling him emotionally, ‘More happy that I ever believed possible.’

  ‘Happier even than you dreamed of being at sixteen?’ he teased her gently.

  Fliss laughed. ‘At sixteen I didn’t dare dream of being married to you, Vidal.’

  In several hours’ time they would be boarding the private jet that would be taking them to the private tropical island where they were going to honeymoon, but right now the two of them were making a special pilgrimage, retracing together the steps taken all those years ago by her mother and her father, accompanied by young Vidal.

  From the Alhambra they had strolled to the Generalife, the famous summer palace with its much-photographed water garden and its long canal and fountains bordered by beautifully tended flowerbeds. Sunlight danced on the jets of water thrown up by the fountains, and when Vidal stopped walking alongside one of them Fliss looked at him expectantly with love in her eyes.

  ‘It was here that I saw your father take your mother’s hand,’ he told her softly, reaching out to take hold of Fliss’s hand.

  As she looked into the heart of the fountain it was almost possible for Fliss to imagine that she could see the shadowy images of those two young people.

  ‘Our love will be deeper and stronger for knowing their story,’ Vidal promised. ‘Our happiness together is what they would both have wanted for us.’

  ‘Yes,’ Fliss agreed.

  It might normally be forbidden, but Vidal had magically made it possible for officialdom to turn a blind eye so that there was no one to object when, very gently and carefully, Fliss opened her closed palm to allow the petals from some of the white roses from her wedding bouquet to fall into the water, where they floated gently.

  ‘A releas
e of the past and a welcome to the future,’ Fliss told Vidal.

  ‘Our future,’ he responded, taking her into his arms. ‘The only future I could ever want.’

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

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